If you’re Canadian then nothing compares to Hawkins Cheezies, but thankfully they’re also dirt cheap

Hard disagree on body wash vs soap. Soap always leaves a weird filmy feeling on my skin no matter what brand I use. Plus having to lather up the bar is annoying and I don’t want to deal with wet washcloths in the shower. Give me a poof and a bottle of body wash any day.

Google Sheets is FOSS?

Can’t exactly say the same for Samsung phones though. I used to have their cheaper midrangers and after like 2 years they’d get horrendously slow in day-to-day tasks. I got an older flagship for roughly the same price as a new midranger by them recently and I hope it’ll last longer.

But they’re so nice and shiny. Also, who’s out there paying full price for their phones? most carriers have so many deals out the wazoo you end up paying like 10% of the retail price. Laughs in iPhone 15 Pro and you can’t shame me for it.

Also, a cheaper alternative is to eat less and eat healthier. I know we can’t all afford expensive healthy foods but just simply cutting out excess fats, sugar and empty carbs from your diet will add years to your life and also add better years to your life.

Not exactly. Just a fun fact and disclaimer that I use generics if at all possible. But my pharmacology class taught that generics can have higher tolerance of error in % of active ingredient. Not usually a big deal unless the drug has a very narrow therapeutic range, meaning too little doesn’t work and too much will harm you. 99.9% of generics is fine. But if you ever wonder if one batch of your med doesn’t seem to work as well this it’s likely that batch was on the lower end of acceptable.

But real Advil has the candy coating on the outside, and I haven’t found a generic that does =(

Otherwise 100% identical yes.

Depends on the meds. I take concerta for ADHD and as I understand it, the generic doesn’t use the same release mechanism.

Often made by the same.

Aspirin and paracetamol I don’t think are patented by any one company now. Supermarket brand is super cheap.

“There are major durability differences between different cables and many manufacturers offer additional features, beyond the ability to carry an HDMI signal, that could add value and cost” says Park.

There can still be a difference in physical quality, even if signal quality is relatively unchanged.

This was pretty close to being true for 1080p and lower resolutions. If you get a 4k 120hz HDR display then bandwidth and signal integrity start becoming very important. The article you linked is rather old and really only considers media up to 4k 30fps. Cable quality especially matters at lengths above 4 ft for uhd and higher.

There’s a lot of snake oil so you can’t just trust marketing claims. I’ve had terrible luck with cables that claim to support high resolutions from amazon and even monoprice. I’ve resorted to buying cables from actual electronics suppliers like digikey since their speed ratings should be accurate.

This used to be true, but unfortunately, like USB-C the game has changed completely.

The downside to standardization is that if you keep the same physical form for multiple iterations, the internals can change. The specs of the source and receiving ends have gone through tons of changes since 2015 and old HDMI 1.4 Cables don’t have the same standards to transmit high speed signals from things like PS5, Xbox, Apple TV etc.

Additionally because they require programming and HDCP (a verification handshake between the 2 devices it connects) when companies cheap out they may not properly program them.

That being said, you don’t need spend an arm and a leg, but don’t get shit either. Generally speaking, buy the cheapest version HDMI 2.1 from a reputable brand or vendor. Definitely not from Amazon anymore, a TON of products labeled 2.1 are actually 2.0 or worse, 1.4.

Absolutely not. I finally got a 4K 120hz OLED TV which needs a HDMI 2.1 cable. Ordered a certified one and I couldn’t get 120hz to run whatever way I tried. I managed to force it one time and the TV screen black screened every two seconds. After doing everything else (reinstall GPU drivers, messing with settings) I finally ordered a different HDMI cable.

Plugged it in, set 120hz, it worked. Both cables are certified, but one was trash.

Even with the new cable I sometimes get a short black screen now, but I have no clue if it’s the cable’s fault or the TV. HDMI cables are a total mess when you actually want to use the full bandwidth :-/

I switched to 4K 60hz for now as I don’t really game on the TV anyway, it also allows me to use TrueMotion again (which seemingly doesn’t run at 120hz). Either way I get anxious about HDMI cables now, lol.

I think HDMI cables is a rabbit hole subject you can really lose some time with. I don’t know how everyone is feeling about Linus these days (I never heard how his independent ethics audit went), but he did a big deep dive on this and found result all over the place. Some cables costing WAY more than they should being total garbage, and some cheap ones being relatively OK and meeting spec, with no real way to know who is safe without either 1) testing them yourself OR 2) finding someone doing a wide batch of testing.

To a degree. I once bought HDMI cables at Dollarama thinking the same thing. For $4, it should work good enough, right? It took me a while to realize that the random interference that was pixalating and distorting the image was the cable and not my media PC, but not before swapping the video card to test.

You can buy cheap cables, but beware that not all cables are the same quality.

OK, this one is true until it isn’t.

HDMI 1.4 and arguably 2.0 specs were straightforward enough that it was rare to encounter a cable, no matter how cheap, that did not support all the features you wanted if it listed the right HDMI spec. That… is no longer a universal truth with HDMI 2.1 if you need something that will do 4K120 with HDR. There are cables that just don’t like some ports, particularly on PCs.

Length is also a way this can be wrong. Go above 2.5-3m and you may start losing the ability to hit some of the spec. I have a HDMI setup that requires a longer cable and there are basic cables that work and some that don’t for the application. To get a better chance on longer cables you end up having to go for powered cables or HDMI over fiber, which are both more expensive than normal cables and it can be luck of the draw even with expensive cables whether they will like your devices and be compatible with what you’re trying to do.

So console plugged directly to your 60Hz TV over 1.5m? Sure, cheap cable will do. Longer distances or higher bandwidth requirements? Be prepared to shop around and try different options, potentially getting very expensive.

Harbor Freight is fucking awesome.

Yup, buy most things at harbor freight the first time, if you break theirs buy whatever name brand fits your color scheme.

I try not to use a lot of plastic wrap, but sometimes it’s the right tool for the job. I will always spring for the good stuff, generic is basically useless and you waste way more for inferior performance.

The tools is good advice most of the time, but not if the tool would fail dangerously. Don’t skimp on car jacks, table saws, or other things that are likely to injure you if they fail.

Screwdrivers/drills/hammers/crowbars/etc. don’t need to be expensive if you are going to use them rarely as the professional grade is mostly about being used all day every day and being able to survive rough handling by tired workers.

cheap rabbit toys use A LOT of glue, which is obviously not good for any animal.

Largely have to disagree with you there. The more expensive toys usually last a lot longer with my dogs.

This is mainly true for cats.

Expensive toy = zero interest

The box the expensive toy came in = hours of fun.

Not their (organic) eggs, at least in my area. They have pale, tasteless yolks. Other than eggs, we get Kirkland if it’s an option.

the top end models of the good brands are just scams, they just look a bit nicer and have some shitty “AI powered” app you’ll never use.

This is literally a scam.
There was an article a while back which I can’t find right now, a few of those product designers were saying that past $100-$150 they really weren’t sure what benefits could be added so they just throw a bunch of useless whiz bang shit in that serves no useful purpose but they sell it for $300 or whatever and enough people buy it to make it worth building another SKU.

In most cases the super top end one has the same motor as the midrange or low-midrange one, and takes the same brush heads, which means it does exactly the same thing. Buy that one for $85 and be done with it.

I’ve been using a sonicare for years now. I think it was expensive but it’s lasted forever and does a great job.

I’ve learned this the hard way. Got two nice, different Panasonics in a row only to have both fail after a relatively short time period (“relatively short” kinda varies for me since I think things that happened five years ago happened “the other day” these days). After the second failure, I just got the cheapest of the Panasonics, and it’s outlasted both of the previous ones already and does just as good a job.

When I was in college, I admired my boss and his BMW. He then told me that it was a hand-me-down, and he spends a few hours a month maintaining it because there’s always something that breaks and he can’t afford to bring it into the shop every time.

He joked on a few occasions of just giving me the car after a year, and after a while, it felt like a cry for help rather than a joke.

100% agree here. They all need maintenance, but higher end ones have pricer parts and less common, affordable after market parts. Cars are for the most part a utility and a cost center. You want to minimize your cost and maximize your value gotten out of it.

I despise cars as a status symbol, because again it’s just going to turn into a rust bucket like the rest of them at the same or worse rates, but also it just sets people up for failure in the lives just tens of thousands down the drain, literal years of work, for something’s that’s nearly worthless by the time they pay it off.

Hard disagree!

Are you saying that you’ve owned both cheap and expensive cars, and that your favorites have always been the cheap ones? That they’ve been more reliable, more comfortable, better-riding, and better-driving? Or, at least, no worse than the expensive ones?

Yes, more expensive cars are more expensive. They often have a higher cost of ownership. And, sometimes, brands really fuck up and cut corners they shouldn’t, and result an reputational harm that takes years to recover from, long after they’ve fixed the production issues (c.f. Audi in the early 00’s). But, IME, it’s usually worth it, if you can afford it.